I was going to make a long post about my escapades "foraging" Beaumont last night, but I just received an email asking about my parents' whereabouts that covers most of it. I'll just copy and paste:

Mom and Dad are just fine in Baton Rouge with Pat and Henry. They
have Mawmaw in tow and are hunkered down comfortably at Pat and Henry's new
house.

They evacuated Beaumont last week in two cars with both of
their mothers. They went to Newton first to stay with some friends of Dad,
but Newton was forced to evacuate as well, so they went to some friends of
Nana's in (crap, I can't ever remember that town name, but one further
north). Nana is still with her friends in
Town-I-Can't-Remember.

I went to Beaumont last night to evacuate
their cats, so I was able to get a first-hand look at the damage. Their
neighbors are going to hate them. Not only did their house sustain no
damage, but the branches that fell in the front yard all fell in the exact spot
where they would need to be dragged for the large trash guys to haul them
away. Fifteen feet from the curb to the front of the house are completely
devoid of anything that might require dragging. The back of the house is
slightly different, with branches everywhere, but still nothing was
damaged. The trash can on the side of the house is still upright, two feet
from its normal spot, and Mom's bird bath is still in perfect condition in the
exact spot it's supposed to be.

Beaumont, on the other hand,
is pretty destroyed. To begin with, I had to sneak into the town because
the local police, State troopers and National Guard are blocking all the
exits. There are convoys of fifty or so large utility trucks driving too
and fro, and I was able to slip in between two of the trucks in a convoy and
exit the highway with them. There isn't major structural damage to the
town that I could see (windows and garage doors are smashed, but I don’t
remember any buildings knocked down), but there are about as many fences, trees
and power lines on the ground as there are standing. I actually had to
backtrack a bit through my parents' neighborhood because the way I was taking in
had a huge tree completely blocking the road.

If anyone's
interested, I took some pictures of some of it, but I have yet to go over how
well they came out.

Also, if you want to contact Mom and Dad, they
can still be reached at their home phone. Because they now use Vonage,
their home phone is set to forward to Mom's cell phone whenever their home phone
is down.